newnumber6 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
newnumber6) wrote2006-05-30 11:41 am
newnumber6) wrote2006-05-30 11:41 am
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XET Diaries, Part 5: The Government, and Organizations Secret and Public
This time around, we're dealing mostly with plots surrounding various organizations. Delta Green. The Office of Metahuman Affairs. Brotherhood Splinters. Weapon X. Excelsior!
Delta Green
For those that don’t know, Delta Green was an RPG expansion/campaign setting based off Call of Cthulhu. I highly recommend it, btw. Anyway, it was intended as a core part of our theme from the beginning because the person who started XET was a fan (and inspired a few more of us), although it didn’t get much play because very few of the player base even heard of it. So, they tended to be shadowy background players.
Delta Green is an illegal conspiracy within the government that fights Mythosy threats. They operate in a cell structure with members holding some position in the government usually, and carefully redirect resources or dispatch agents on pretense while investigating something or another. A long time ago, they used to be a legitimate black ops organization but a disastrous mission closed the department down… except the people involved in it knew the work they were doing was too important, so they continued illegally… although, most members of Delta Green actually believe it’s still an actual, though secret, government project. Very few know it’s completely unsanctioned.
Delta Green typically has a slash, burn, and cover up policy towards mythosy stuff. If someone’s learning too much magic and going crazy, they’ll kill him and if they don’t just make him disappear entirely they’ll plant evidence that suggests he was a drug dealer or terrorist and the shooting was in self defense. However, their shoot-first-and-make-sure-nobody-asks-questions policy does have one particular effect in the XET universe. They killed and covered up the deaths of mutants. In fact, they’re one of the groups responsible for nobody (not even the rest of the government) knowing much about mutants before the Black Prom. Of course, DG didn’t know they were mutants, it assumed they were some mythosy taint (which, technically, they were) and part of a dark plot against humanity. This is pretty much the Big Dark Secret of Delta Green that would have eventually come to light with some of the mutants who were working with them. Although ever since the Black Prom it’s not their policy to destroy mutants on sight, they’re doing a ‘wait and see’ strategy, having been convinced by Groundskeeper Willie that they’re not all bad and indeed may be a useful tool against the horrors, it’s still a pretty dark past that would hurt their relations.
Speaking of Groundskeeper Willie, I probably should go back and talk about him, even though I’ve told this story before. Groundskeeper Willie was a throwaway gag that took on a life of its own. In one of the early X-Mansion scenes Xavier had a Scottish groundskeeper named Willie. I thought it was kind of a lame joke myself, but we went with it and occasionally referenced him, mostly as helping drive people around who didn’t have a license. Then somewhere, I had the phrase ‘The Secret Life of Groundskeeper Willie’ in mind as a log title. From there, an idea sprang... Groundskeeper Willie secretly worked with Delta Green, and had a history fighting the mythos. He was in fact spying on Xavier for them, even though Xavier was truly his friend. Willie’s first loyalty was to Delta Green (although I had it in mind that he technically wasn’t a member, since he had no position within the US government, just a well-connected friendly from some joint operations in Europe). We introduced this suddenly in a log with that same Secret Life of Groundskeeper Willie title. (Which also established Forge as a DG friendly) Then, later, when the Rutland incident broke out, DG needed the X-Men’s help, and so his connection to them was revealed to mansionites in game, along with the fact that he’d been giving them information about all of them.
At this point Xavier felt betrayed and although he kept Willie on (he was a liason to the DG after all) he removed all of his access to secret X-Men stuff and he was just an ordinary groundskeeper. Their relationship was awkward and a bit chilly afterwards, although they were slowly mending fences. I did at some point want to do a scene with Rina (who was one of those most visibly in the ‘castrate Willie’ range of reactions) where he explains that he never betrayed Xavier because his first loyalty was to Delta Green all along. Even if it’s a weak justification, I wanted him to make it. But never happened.
Willie’s history was left a little vague, but I tried to imply that he’d lost one of his wives and a child to the Mythos before meeting Charles, and he had some experience investigating a new age cult that was a front for some disastrous mythosy stuff. Plus of course a long-ago military career.
Anyway, back to Delta Green. After the Rutland incident Delta Green would begin using the X-Men as a sort of unofficial cell, used to go in and fight messes that are too risky to send normal agents. In essence DG viewed them as a resource to be exploited, and remained wary about mutants in general, but at least more civil. Also there’d be information sharing.
At some point I would have liked a DG liason other than Willie be appointed, and that would be Fred Duncan of either the FBI or (more likely) Office of Metahuman Affairs.
By the way, when the Brotherhood raided Forge’s Aerie in an attempt to keep the hi-tech from falling into the hands of the government, one plan was that they'd face some government agents who were actually Delta Green, who were raiding the Aerie in an attempt to keep the occult tomes Forge kept away from everyone, and were also trying to take any hi tech for themselves and keep it away from the government. In any event, I _think_ they were still racing against DG's clock - they initiated the raid because they'd had information the government was going to do it, but it was DG rather than MJ12 who were at that point unaware. (There’s another conspiracy within the government, Majestic 12, who are firmly entrenched and have all the power they want, but are in collusion with dark forces. MJ-12 are the ones behind projects such as Weapon X and the dimensional portal that exploded into the Rutland incident, and DG considers them the ‘enemy’. Though they will work together on occasion, like trying to fix the Rutland incident).
I did once have an idea of revisiting the Ghouls Under New York, perhaps with some of the X-Men (particularly, the ones who met the relatively peaceful ghouls during the Manhattan Mutant Project) clashing with Delta Green who want to destroy them – of course, it’s only the new ghouls who are murdering people for food, while the old ghouls are content just to get their bodies from other sources. And Mersenne the Ghoul would have a chance to return!
Brotherhood Splinters
Since the May Day scene where the Euro Brotherhood fell, there was always some idea of splinter groups, remnants of the Euro Brotherhood forming their own agendas, somewhat more activist than the New York branch of the Brotherhood, and going by different names like the Acolytes and maybe even the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Didn’t have many detailed plans for these splinter grounds, beyond being an annoyance somewhere between the bad group level of the regular Brotherhood (not really all that evil at all) and the MLF (crazy evil), but generally playing with the idea that Magneto’s message will have been taken different ways by different people and one bad group perhaps tarring the reputation of the more moderate ones. It also would have been a good opportunity to dredge up more obscure characters.
The Office of Metahuman Affairs
Oh, poor, misunderstood OMA. The OMA was sort of the ‘FBI for mutant related crime’, a new division set up after Bush took office. Most people tended to assume it was another evil government agency, but it wasn’t. Like any agency there were good people and bad people in it. People who hated mutants and people who were okay with them in theory but realized they needed special means to fight mutant crime and crimes against mutants, and people just generally doing their job. It could be used by the conspiracy for evil but the conspiracy could use the IRS for evil and... wait, that’s a bad example. The conspiracy could use the DEA or EPA for evil and that doesn’t mean they’re evil in and of themselves.
Before we had the Ultimates ready to go I did want to try and get together a PC team of OMA recruited mutants (and humans). Monet was one of them but then she got absorbed by Rogue. Sadly it never really got off the ground.
Also on the OMA topic were a bunch of NPCs I really liked. They’re all stolen from the New Universe and adapted for my purposes. Backfire and Imprint showed up occasionally. Backfire could redirect attacks to him against the person who attacked him, making him a perfect defensive target, but he was a bit of a jerk and blowhard. Imprint was a human recording device who could transform his sensory input into electronic impulses that could be read like a wireless camera feed. He was also a mute. The best thing about them was they were like Pen and Teller, even in the comics, so I used them for the pictures on their OHXET entries. But they were fun to play.
I never actually got to use him (at least I think I didn’t… I might have snuck him in somewhere and forgot), but there was another character I wanted to have on the team as one of the OMA’s early means to detect mutant. Kleenex was the nickname of a paranormal with ‘paranormal allergies’, from the New U comic Justice. Among other things, when he was near another paranormal, he sneezed. Sub in mutant for paranormal and you have a perfect low rent mutant detector. Even made up an OHXET for him but never linked it in.
I also wrote in ‘worked for a time with the OMA’ into Spidey’s backstory (after the first player left him) but nothing involved with that side of his life ever came up.
After the Ultimates formed the OMA still had a role in government (since the Ultimates weren’t typically supposed to be investigating crimes), but much less of a role in the game unfortunately. They would have shown up now and again but not as much and there wouldn’t be as many plots focusing on them as there might otherwise have been.
Weapon X
Not much to say on this, except that it was an MJ-12 project and they probably would have, at some point, made a return if we continued, although maybe modified into less of a ‘kidnap the mutants and make them work for us’ and more as a ‘Super Secret black ops version of the Ultimates’ and maybe more canon versions.
Of the first Weapon X I just have to say one of my favorite bits was the mission where they were sent to retrieve the research into mechanically detecting/blocking telepathy, which would have eventually shown up on MJ12 agents. We had a progression list of what stages their technology would go through, from just being able to sense someone scanning them to being able to block it to being able to actively fight back.
Excelsior!
Well, Excelsior really wasn’t a government agency, but the theme of this post seems to be organizations, so I’ll talk about it here.
I’ll confess I never got as far as plotting many Excelsior-specific plots. Firstly because it was new and so I couldn’t just use plots from before XET’s first death like I could for other groups or characters. But most of my plots were designed so that Excelsior had an easy in to be involved. The Nextacy plot was geared to be something that Excelsior would be interested in (since it'’ a drug problem peculiar to mutants), for example and I had a lot of ‘open to anyone interested’ plots that would have involved Excelsior members if interested.
And of course they were a site of a MLF attack and a nice launch-point for anti-mutant activity. I probably would have had some sort of Final Quarantine plot mostly involving Excelsior as they’re the most visible mutant group and FQ is the most nutso anti-mutant group. Btw, Final Quarantine itself? Stolen and adapted from the Cybergeneration RPG (an expansion of Cyberpunk 2020). Great concept, great name, works even better for mutants than for the Cyber-evolved IMHO.
(Which brings me to another long ago idea for a good MU* crossover… Cyberpunk/Cybergeneration crossed with X-Men mythos. A long time ago we talked about some ideas for that in the OOC room and it sounded really cool to me. Magneto creating the Carbon Plague as a way to make all the humans into mutants, only it didn’t work as well as he intended. Evil corps. Cable not needing a complicated backstory, he’s just a mutant guy with a cyberarm. Maybe Angel losing his wings and replacing them with cyberwings himself. The opportunity for human characters competing on an even keel with mutants through technology. Could have been sweet. If I was a little less sane I’d actually try to start one up again, but I’ve learned my lesson about running games. But I digress).
Aside from that, there was always the vague plot of the HFC trying to make a play for control of Excelsior as a whole. It was generally agreed not to have anything big and dark beyond Excelsior and to have it genuinely trying to be a force for good, but HFC members were on the board of directors and there’s nothing wrong with a plot where they try (and probably fail thanks to PC intervention) to seize it for their own purposes. That could have been fun, but I didn’t have any firm plot ideas on that score.
Oh, and I lobbied to have one of my pet NPCs Babel (from the New Universe again, my favorite source for obscure characters that are really cool and can be converted into mutants easily) on Excelsior’s board. Didn’t know exactly what I was going to do with him there, but I just thought it’d be fun to have him pop up. I did have an idea for his daughter, but I’ll save that for another post.
-
Next time around, what’s the penultimate post (at least, in terms of planned posts… there’s always the chance that months from now I’ll remember something and decide to post it)… the remains of the Hastur Plots, and the complete Songs of XET. Yes, there is a connection between the two topics. Be afraid.
Delta Green
For those that don’t know, Delta Green was an RPG expansion/campaign setting based off Call of Cthulhu. I highly recommend it, btw. Anyway, it was intended as a core part of our theme from the beginning because the person who started XET was a fan (and inspired a few more of us), although it didn’t get much play because very few of the player base even heard of it. So, they tended to be shadowy background players.
Delta Green is an illegal conspiracy within the government that fights Mythosy threats. They operate in a cell structure with members holding some position in the government usually, and carefully redirect resources or dispatch agents on pretense while investigating something or another. A long time ago, they used to be a legitimate black ops organization but a disastrous mission closed the department down… except the people involved in it knew the work they were doing was too important, so they continued illegally… although, most members of Delta Green actually believe it’s still an actual, though secret, government project. Very few know it’s completely unsanctioned.
Delta Green typically has a slash, burn, and cover up policy towards mythosy stuff. If someone’s learning too much magic and going crazy, they’ll kill him and if they don’t just make him disappear entirely they’ll plant evidence that suggests he was a drug dealer or terrorist and the shooting was in self defense. However, their shoot-first-and-make-sure-nobody-asks-questions policy does have one particular effect in the XET universe. They killed and covered up the deaths of mutants. In fact, they’re one of the groups responsible for nobody (not even the rest of the government) knowing much about mutants before the Black Prom. Of course, DG didn’t know they were mutants, it assumed they were some mythosy taint (which, technically, they were) and part of a dark plot against humanity. This is pretty much the Big Dark Secret of Delta Green that would have eventually come to light with some of the mutants who were working with them. Although ever since the Black Prom it’s not their policy to destroy mutants on sight, they’re doing a ‘wait and see’ strategy, having been convinced by Groundskeeper Willie that they’re not all bad and indeed may be a useful tool against the horrors, it’s still a pretty dark past that would hurt their relations.
Speaking of Groundskeeper Willie, I probably should go back and talk about him, even though I’ve told this story before. Groundskeeper Willie was a throwaway gag that took on a life of its own. In one of the early X-Mansion scenes Xavier had a Scottish groundskeeper named Willie. I thought it was kind of a lame joke myself, but we went with it and occasionally referenced him, mostly as helping drive people around who didn’t have a license. Then somewhere, I had the phrase ‘The Secret Life of Groundskeeper Willie’ in mind as a log title. From there, an idea sprang... Groundskeeper Willie secretly worked with Delta Green, and had a history fighting the mythos. He was in fact spying on Xavier for them, even though Xavier was truly his friend. Willie’s first loyalty was to Delta Green (although I had it in mind that he technically wasn’t a member, since he had no position within the US government, just a well-connected friendly from some joint operations in Europe). We introduced this suddenly in a log with that same Secret Life of Groundskeeper Willie title. (Which also established Forge as a DG friendly) Then, later, when the Rutland incident broke out, DG needed the X-Men’s help, and so his connection to them was revealed to mansionites in game, along with the fact that he’d been giving them information about all of them.
At this point Xavier felt betrayed and although he kept Willie on (he was a liason to the DG after all) he removed all of his access to secret X-Men stuff and he was just an ordinary groundskeeper. Their relationship was awkward and a bit chilly afterwards, although they were slowly mending fences. I did at some point want to do a scene with Rina (who was one of those most visibly in the ‘castrate Willie’ range of reactions) where he explains that he never betrayed Xavier because his first loyalty was to Delta Green all along. Even if it’s a weak justification, I wanted him to make it. But never happened.
Willie’s history was left a little vague, but I tried to imply that he’d lost one of his wives and a child to the Mythos before meeting Charles, and he had some experience investigating a new age cult that was a front for some disastrous mythosy stuff. Plus of course a long-ago military career.
Anyway, back to Delta Green. After the Rutland incident Delta Green would begin using the X-Men as a sort of unofficial cell, used to go in and fight messes that are too risky to send normal agents. In essence DG viewed them as a resource to be exploited, and remained wary about mutants in general, but at least more civil. Also there’d be information sharing.
At some point I would have liked a DG liason other than Willie be appointed, and that would be Fred Duncan of either the FBI or (more likely) Office of Metahuman Affairs.
By the way, when the Brotherhood raided Forge’s Aerie in an attempt to keep the hi-tech from falling into the hands of the government, one plan was that they'd face some government agents who were actually Delta Green, who were raiding the Aerie in an attempt to keep the occult tomes Forge kept away from everyone, and were also trying to take any hi tech for themselves and keep it away from the government. In any event, I _think_ they were still racing against DG's clock - they initiated the raid because they'd had information the government was going to do it, but it was DG rather than MJ12 who were at that point unaware. (There’s another conspiracy within the government, Majestic 12, who are firmly entrenched and have all the power they want, but are in collusion with dark forces. MJ-12 are the ones behind projects such as Weapon X and the dimensional portal that exploded into the Rutland incident, and DG considers them the ‘enemy’. Though they will work together on occasion, like trying to fix the Rutland incident).
I did once have an idea of revisiting the Ghouls Under New York, perhaps with some of the X-Men (particularly, the ones who met the relatively peaceful ghouls during the Manhattan Mutant Project) clashing with Delta Green who want to destroy them – of course, it’s only the new ghouls who are murdering people for food, while the old ghouls are content just to get their bodies from other sources. And Mersenne the Ghoul would have a chance to return!
Brotherhood Splinters
Since the May Day scene where the Euro Brotherhood fell, there was always some idea of splinter groups, remnants of the Euro Brotherhood forming their own agendas, somewhat more activist than the New York branch of the Brotherhood, and going by different names like the Acolytes and maybe even the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Didn’t have many detailed plans for these splinter grounds, beyond being an annoyance somewhere between the bad group level of the regular Brotherhood (not really all that evil at all) and the MLF (crazy evil), but generally playing with the idea that Magneto’s message will have been taken different ways by different people and one bad group perhaps tarring the reputation of the more moderate ones. It also would have been a good opportunity to dredge up more obscure characters.
The Office of Metahuman Affairs
Oh, poor, misunderstood OMA. The OMA was sort of the ‘FBI for mutant related crime’, a new division set up after Bush took office. Most people tended to assume it was another evil government agency, but it wasn’t. Like any agency there were good people and bad people in it. People who hated mutants and people who were okay with them in theory but realized they needed special means to fight mutant crime and crimes against mutants, and people just generally doing their job. It could be used by the conspiracy for evil but the conspiracy could use the IRS for evil and... wait, that’s a bad example. The conspiracy could use the DEA or EPA for evil and that doesn’t mean they’re evil in and of themselves.
Before we had the Ultimates ready to go I did want to try and get together a PC team of OMA recruited mutants (and humans). Monet was one of them but then she got absorbed by Rogue. Sadly it never really got off the ground.
Also on the OMA topic were a bunch of NPCs I really liked. They’re all stolen from the New Universe and adapted for my purposes. Backfire and Imprint showed up occasionally. Backfire could redirect attacks to him against the person who attacked him, making him a perfect defensive target, but he was a bit of a jerk and blowhard. Imprint was a human recording device who could transform his sensory input into electronic impulses that could be read like a wireless camera feed. He was also a mute. The best thing about them was they were like Pen and Teller, even in the comics, so I used them for the pictures on their OHXET entries. But they were fun to play.
I never actually got to use him (at least I think I didn’t… I might have snuck him in somewhere and forgot), but there was another character I wanted to have on the team as one of the OMA’s early means to detect mutant. Kleenex was the nickname of a paranormal with ‘paranormal allergies’, from the New U comic Justice. Among other things, when he was near another paranormal, he sneezed. Sub in mutant for paranormal and you have a perfect low rent mutant detector. Even made up an OHXET for him but never linked it in.
I also wrote in ‘worked for a time with the OMA’ into Spidey’s backstory (after the first player left him) but nothing involved with that side of his life ever came up.
After the Ultimates formed the OMA still had a role in government (since the Ultimates weren’t typically supposed to be investigating crimes), but much less of a role in the game unfortunately. They would have shown up now and again but not as much and there wouldn’t be as many plots focusing on them as there might otherwise have been.
Weapon X
Not much to say on this, except that it was an MJ-12 project and they probably would have, at some point, made a return if we continued, although maybe modified into less of a ‘kidnap the mutants and make them work for us’ and more as a ‘Super Secret black ops version of the Ultimates’ and maybe more canon versions.
Of the first Weapon X I just have to say one of my favorite bits was the mission where they were sent to retrieve the research into mechanically detecting/blocking telepathy, which would have eventually shown up on MJ12 agents. We had a progression list of what stages their technology would go through, from just being able to sense someone scanning them to being able to block it to being able to actively fight back.
Excelsior!
Well, Excelsior really wasn’t a government agency, but the theme of this post seems to be organizations, so I’ll talk about it here.
I’ll confess I never got as far as plotting many Excelsior-specific plots. Firstly because it was new and so I couldn’t just use plots from before XET’s first death like I could for other groups or characters. But most of my plots were designed so that Excelsior had an easy in to be involved. The Nextacy plot was geared to be something that Excelsior would be interested in (since it'’ a drug problem peculiar to mutants), for example and I had a lot of ‘open to anyone interested’ plots that would have involved Excelsior members if interested.
And of course they were a site of a MLF attack and a nice launch-point for anti-mutant activity. I probably would have had some sort of Final Quarantine plot mostly involving Excelsior as they’re the most visible mutant group and FQ is the most nutso anti-mutant group. Btw, Final Quarantine itself? Stolen and adapted from the Cybergeneration RPG (an expansion of Cyberpunk 2020). Great concept, great name, works even better for mutants than for the Cyber-evolved IMHO.
(Which brings me to another long ago idea for a good MU* crossover… Cyberpunk/Cybergeneration crossed with X-Men mythos. A long time ago we talked about some ideas for that in the OOC room and it sounded really cool to me. Magneto creating the Carbon Plague as a way to make all the humans into mutants, only it didn’t work as well as he intended. Evil corps. Cable not needing a complicated backstory, he’s just a mutant guy with a cyberarm. Maybe Angel losing his wings and replacing them with cyberwings himself. The opportunity for human characters competing on an even keel with mutants through technology. Could have been sweet. If I was a little less sane I’d actually try to start one up again, but I’ve learned my lesson about running games. But I digress).
Aside from that, there was always the vague plot of the HFC trying to make a play for control of Excelsior as a whole. It was generally agreed not to have anything big and dark beyond Excelsior and to have it genuinely trying to be a force for good, but HFC members were on the board of directors and there’s nothing wrong with a plot where they try (and probably fail thanks to PC intervention) to seize it for their own purposes. That could have been fun, but I didn’t have any firm plot ideas on that score.
Oh, and I lobbied to have one of my pet NPCs Babel (from the New Universe again, my favorite source for obscure characters that are really cool and can be converted into mutants easily) on Excelsior’s board. Didn’t know exactly what I was going to do with him there, but I just thought it’d be fun to have him pop up. I did have an idea for his daughter, but I’ll save that for another post.
-
Next time around, what’s the penultimate post (at least, in terms of planned posts… there’s always the chance that months from now I’ll remember something and decide to post it)… the remains of the Hastur Plots, and the complete Songs of XET. Yes, there is a connection between the two topics. Be afraid.